Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Year in the Rear-View: 2013

Every December I sit down to write one of these
end-of-the-year posts, and every year I’m floored. I didn’t do half the things
I swore I would this year! I did twice the things I swore I would this year! At
the same time! What makes this paradox possible is the fact that I’m crazy, the
world is crazy, and writing is crazy. Amid those vectors of craziness, however,
shit got done. Here’s some of what went down in 2013:

-In March, I was nominated for a Hugo Award in the Best
Semiprozine category as part of the Clarkesworld Magazine editing team in 2012
(I served as Nonfiction Editor last year). And then, in September at Worldcon
in San Antonio, WE WON—and I now have a shiny Hugo rocket sitting on top of a
bookshelf next to my Lego pirate ship. I owe the win to Neil Clarke, Sean
Wallace, and Kate Baker at Clarkesworld, who continue to put out the best
science fiction/fantasy magazine in the universe. I can’t thank them enough for
having me along for the ride. During my twelve months as an editor at
Clarkesworld, I launched a new monthly column, drew in a fresh crop of
top-notch nonfiction contributors, and helped streamline some behind-the-scenes
workflow. I’m extremely proud that I was able to play that small part in the
continued excellence and success of Clarkesworld. Heck, I even squeezed in an essay for them this year about locomotives throughout the history of science fiction.

-I proposed to my girlfriend of six years, Angie, on New
Year’s 2012. She said yes! In September, we got hitched. It was a small, quiet,
beautiful wedding ceremony, and Angie is the best person I’ve ever known, so… that was
pretty awesome.

-I wrote first drafts of two novels. The fate of them remains to be determined, but I’ve got some nibbles, and I’m currently in the midst of doing a massive revision/polishing job on one. It’s a science fiction book with a 12-year-old protagonist who
lives in a peculiarly dystopian future. The revision should be done and sent
off to some editors by the end of this month. So, yeah, fingers crossed.

-After four years of freelancing for The Onion’s A.V. Club
(and three years of being their City Editor in Denver before that), I was promoted to
Senior Writer of the site. It’s an honor I never could have imagined a dozen
years ago, when I decided to quite my retail job and start writing for my local
alt-weekly newspaper, let alone when I first discovered and fell in love with The Onion and The A.V. Club many years ago. Of all the stuff I wrote for A.V. this year, I'm most happy with the launch of Fear of a Punk Decade, a year-long series where I examine '90s punk, hardcore, and emo, year by year, mixing in a little memoir along the way.

-I began writing music reviews and articles for two other
publications that I love: Pitchfork, the biggest independent source of music
criticism in the world, and Decibel, the best heavy metal magazine in
existence. Hell yes.

-I was asked, and eagerly accepted, an assignment to write a
chapter-length essay about time-travel-themed music for The Time Traveller’s Almanac, an epic compendium of short stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Not only did the British edition of the book come out
in November (the U.S. edition will be published in March via Tor Books), I got
to share a table of contents with some of my heroes—including Ray Bradbury,
Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, George R. R. Martin, and
Douglas Adams (not to mention friends of mine such as Carrie Vaughn and Genevieve Valentine).

-And speaking of the great Carrie Vaughn: She and I recently co-wrote
a creative essay for Jeff VanderMeers’s next anthology, The Steampunk User’s Manual. It was a blast shooting text back and
forth with Carrie, and I think the piece came out beautifully. I’m not exactly
certain when the book comes out, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be in 2014.

-A couple other random publication credits that I’m (still)
very excited about are an essay on J. G. Ballard and post-punk for the British speculative-fiction journal Adventure Rocketship!
as well as a more personal essay about being an erstwhile touring musician for the
literary journal New Haven Review.

Of course, there were some things I wanted to do this year
that I didn’t get around to, including finishing the first draft of my
eternally-in-progress post-steampunk novel. Yes, you read that right:
post-steampunk. What does that even mean, besides the fact that I clearly love
the prefix “post-” too much? The book is still in progress, so I guess we’ll
both see.

Actually, finishing a first draft of that book is my primary
goal—call it a resolution—for 2014. Some other resolutions involve selling at
least one of the nonfiction book proposals (of three!) I’m currently working on
AND writing a first draft of a supernatural/science fiction book for kids that
I’ve been turning around in my brain for a few weeks. And did I mention the anthology-editing plans that my friend S. J. Chambers and I are cooking up? Because there's that, too Oh, and Angie and I will
be going on our honeymoon to Ireland in the spring, so that’s something to look
forward to in 2014.

Along with more writing. Lots and lots of writing. Algebraically paradoxical shitloads of writing. Or something.

UPDATE: I almost forgot that one of my old bands, Red Cloud West, played a reunion show last month. It was fun as hell, especially seeing as how I (sadly) don't have time to be in a full-time band right now. Hmmm, maybe I need to add that to the 2014 to-do list. I clearly don't have enough stuff on there as is.

I'm an author and Hugo Award-winning editor whose work has appeared in many publications, including The A.V. Club (where I served three years as a City Editor and am currently a Senior Writer); Clarkesworld Magazine (where I served as nonfiction editor and won a Hugo as part of the 2012 editing team); Pitchfork, NPR.com, Entertainment Weekly, Weird Tales, Tor.com, Alternative Press, Decibel, Skyscraper, The Hooligan, and many others. I'm a 2009 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and my science fiction/fantasy/horror short stories have appeared in Apex Magazine, Farrago's Wainscot, Sybil's Garage, Polluto, M-Brane, and others. Quirk Books published my debut novel, the alternate-history satire Taft 2012, as well as my Pirates of the Caribbean tie-in, The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook. I also appear in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's The Time Traveler's Almanac (Tor) and The A.V. Club book Inventory (Scribner). I'm a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and I'm represented by Jennifer Jackson of Donald Maass Literary Agency. I've also played in many Denver bands, including Crestfallen, The Blue Ontario, Red Cloud West, and 25 Rifles.